The earliest known tract endeavoring to explain the Liar Paradox made no use of the Aristotelian distinction between secundum quid et simpliciter (an argument to fallacy common in early medieval solutions). The anonymous author of a thirteenth-century treatise on insolubilia maintained the position known as cassatio, saying that the only reasonable response to someone who states that he is lying is nil dicis: "You say nothing." Another anonymous author says in a 1225 treatise that this method of dismissing the paradox is secundum communem judicium, or "according to the common judgment".

This early articulation of calling bullshit on someone as a rhetorical trope fell into disrepute after 1225, after which point it is no longer maintained as a possible solution to insolubilia. By the time of Bradwardine's writings (1321-1324), it had come to be regarded as an annoying cop-out. Bradwardine refuted it by taking it with excruciating literalness, arguing that he who does say he is lying is uttering syllables and words, and thus not nothing.


Source: Paul Vincent Spade, "The Origins of Mediaeval Insolubilia Literature", in Lies, Language and Logic in the Middle Ages, London: Varorium Reprints, 1988.

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